The New York TimesAmericans are not good readers. Many blame the ubiquity of digital media. We're too busy on Snapchat to read, or perhaps internet skimming has made us incapable of reading serious prose. But Americans' trouble with reading predates digital technologies. The problem is not bad reading habits engendered by smartphones, but bad education habits engendered by a misunderstanding of how the mind reads.READ MORE

AeonStress pervades our lives. We become anxious when we hear of violence, chaos or discord. And, in our relatively secure world, the pace of life and its demands often lead us to feel that there is too much to do in too little time. This disrupts our natural biological rhythms and encourages unhealthy behaviors, such as eating too much of the wrong things, neglecting exercise and missing out on sleep.
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Vanity FairMany people imagine 19th-century antebellum America as a frontier fantasia: men with handlebar mustaches sitting in dusty saloons, kicking back moonshine whiskey, as a piano player picks out tunes in the background. In reality, though, life was a little more sordid: Americans spent their time after work in fully legal heroin dens; in 1885, opium and cocaine were even given to children to help with teething. READ MORE

The New York TimesSnapchat has long thumbed its nose at social media conventions. The messaging app initially emphasized posts that disappeared rather than remaining permanent. It encouraged users to connect with just a few friends instead of many. And it prized human editing and curation instead of encouraging anybody to post anything. On Wednesday, its parent company, Snap, continued that unconventional approach, unveiling a redesign that effectively separates social and media into two separate parts of the Snapchat app.READ MORE

Nieman LabHow to Think, a new book from Baylor University professor Alan Jacobs, is very much of the times. In it, Jacobs examines the forces — both mental and technological — that conspire to make it easier for people to dig into their positions, to make it harder to understand opposing viewpoints. One big culprit? Human laziness. "For me, the fundamental problem may best be described as an orientation of the will: We suffer from a settled determination to avoid thinking," Jacobs writes.READ MORE

The Digital ReaderPublishing a book can get quite expensive. A good cover designer can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, and the editorial costs alone can set you back even more.
While there are many important expenses, there are also many ways to spend money and get nothing useful back. For example, take the Bowker SAN. This costs $150, and is basically a way for you to list your physical address in a Bowker database — something you can do with your website, or dozen other services, at no cost to yourself.READ MORE

CNBCA huge online advertising scam has been exposed that could be costing businesses, primarily in the U.S., almost $1.3 million a day.
Over the past eight weeks, thousands of publishers have been subject to bots creating fake versions of their websites, a technique called "domain spoofing," according to a paper published by ad technology company Adform.READ MORE

CNNIf you want to riff on the "Mona Lisa," go ahead. Scratch a biro mustache on her. Give her a full beard if you like.
Don't go drawing facial hair directly on the original, of course; that's the physical property of the Louvre, and the museum's conservators are likely to get very angry with you. But otherwise feel free to do your best or worst with Leonardo's portrait of Lady Lisa. READ MORE

Columbia Journalism ReviewVenture-capital funding can be a double-edged sword for startups. On the one hand, the access to money allows young companies to grow quickly without having to worry about profitability, but in many cases it also encourages them to take irrational risks in an attempt to produce the kind of returns VCs rely upon. The dilemma this creates for media companies in particular was thrown into sharp relief recently when bad news broke on a trifecta of high-profile digital-media ventures.READ MORE

CNETWere it not for Gertrude Jekyll, much of the world might be a much drabber place.
Born in 1843, Jekyll was a British horticulturist, garden designer, artist and writer who created more than 400 gardens in Europe and the U.S. and wrote 15 books and more than 1,000 magazine articles on garden design. To honor Jekyll, described as "a premier influence in garden design," Google created a lush and colorful landscape doodle Wednesday to celebrate Jekyll's contribution on her 174th birthday.READ MORE

San Antonio Express-NewsIf you like the idea of having an attractive evergreen to decorate for the holidays and then planting it in your landscape, check out the sheared trees in containers that many area nurseries offer. They work well if you pick the right species and plan adequately.
The best trees are Italian stone pine and Aleppo pine but Deodora cedar, Arizona cypress and ornamental junipers also work.READ MORE

St. Louis Post-DispatchWith Christmas just a few weeks away, a trip to a Christmas tree farm or retail lot might be in your near future. But what should you look for in a tree? These five tips from tree experts might help.READ MORE